Criminals are increasingly turning to computer technology to commit offences, with police noting the volume of data its cyber forensics department needed to examine had surged more than four fold over the past two years.
Chief Superintendent Wong Fook-chuen, of the Commercial Crime Bureau, released figures illustrating the rising trend of cyber crime as he introduced the force's new $4 million Computer Forensics Laboratory at police headquarters in Wan Chai yesterday.
In all, 12 forensic examiners work at the new laboratory, analysing cyber crime data cloned from original evidence to aid investigators.
Superintendent Wong pointed out that 4,766 gigabytes (GB) of crime data had undergone cyber forensic examination last year, four times higher than the 1,084 GB in 2000. So far this year, 3,373 GB of data has required examination.
One GB of data was equivalent to about a billion letters, Superintendent Wong explained.
Head of the bureau's technology crime division, Senior Superintendent Ng Kam-wing, said the number of computer crimes was also on the rise.